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Reality check: Teacher salaries

I have followed a number of articles that indicate that a teacher’s salary is anywhere from $73,000 per year to $81,000 per year which are both correct when all the facts are taken into consideration.

However, the reality is that a beginning teacher with a five-year Education Degree starts at $48,686 and it will take the same teacher 10 years to reach the payscale of $73,000. In order to make $81,000 per year a teacher must have 10 years experience plus a Master’s Degree in Education. Every teacher works on a 10-year pay grid to reach maximum salary. I don’t believe there is another profession that requires that kind of sacrifice. If you add in that a teacher has a five-year degree before being eligible for a teaching job then it is 15 years. It is easy to quote maximum salaries when denigrating teachers’ wages but when you look at the total picture it is a long road to achieve that sum and does not take into account the huge number of young teachers that are nowhere near maximum salary. For clarification on the 10 years salary grid google “BC Teacher Salary Grid 2013” and you can see the real wages that teachers make over the 10-year grid.

Doug Puritch,

Campbell River

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